The One-Time Pad
In this step, you will learn about the strongest encryption scheme, the one-time pad (or OTP), as implemented by the Vernam cipher. You will also find out how its ‘perfect …
Course: Introduction to Encryption and Cryptography
Differences between symmetric and asymmetric encryption
Symmetric vs asymmetric Each of the ciphers that you have seen so far — Caesar, Vigenère, and Vernam — have been symmetric encryption schemes. Symmetric encryption In a symmetric encryption …
Vigenère cipher
You might remember the Vigenère cipher from the earlier step about the history of encryption. It is a polyalphabetic cipher that uses multiple shifts to encrypt a message. In this …
The history of encryption
The need to obscure messages has been around almost as long as the process of writing. In this step, I am going to shine a light on the history of …
The role of encryption in network security
A key application of encryption is network security. Networks that handle data are reliant on encryption to protect sensitive information from those who are not authorised to access it. When …
What is encryption?
Let’s start with a simple definition. What is encryption? Encryption is a process that transforms data to obscure its meaning — in other words, it turns it into something that …
How do we measure the strength of encryption schemes?
In this article, we are going to explore how encryption schemes are evaluated to measure their security. You will find out how you can prove that modern encryption schemes are …
The encryption process
In this step you will learn about several of the main concepts in the encryption process, as well as some important terms. As you have already seen, an encryption scheme …